


i've got my love stuck in my head

by hi_raeth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Modern AU, is this just 2k+ words of fluff? why yes it is, when your casual hook-up stops being casual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 15:50:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14139327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_raeth/pseuds/hi_raeth
Summary: Ben catches feelings for his roommate-slash-close-friend-slash-occasional-hook-up and decides that the best course of action is to assume that she doesn't feel the same way.(Spoiler alert: she does.)





	i've got my love stuck in my head

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so here’s the deal: this was supposed to be a tiny little ficlet where Rey is like, “hey fuckbuddy, wanna fuck?” and Ben goes, “actually, do you maybe wanna do more than that?” and they agree to a trial relationship while Finn and Poe are away for a week. I shit you not, the original title for this was _sign up now and get a free one-week trial!_
> 
> The actual title is taken from Mother Mother's _Love Stuck._

“Hey,” she looks up to find Ben leaning against her open doorway, a dishtowel slung over one shoulder and a warm smile on his face. “I’m making lasagna for dinner; want some?”

It takes her a second to remember that Poe and Finn aren’t around to enforce Suspiciously Cheap Pizza Fridays tonight, having left for Poe’s family home earlier this afternoon. “Yeah, sure,” Rey says with a smile of her own. “That’d be great. I’ll be out in a bit to help, I just–” She waves a hand to indicate the mess she’s sitting right in the center of, a circle of books and notes and assorted papers keeping her prisoner in her own room.

Ben laughs - well, he exhales in a particularly loud and amused sounding way, producing what Poe claims is his best friend’s version of a chuckle. “Take your time,” he tells her before disappearing back into the darkened hallway, his eyes the slightest bit narrowed by the broad grin her situation has drawn from him.

She’s really more of a hindrance than help when it comes to the kitchen – _the only one here who can’t cook to save her life_ , as Finn gleefully and frequently reminds her – but her conscience won’t allow her to sit back and let Ben do all the work. Ten minutes later, reference materials set aside in semi-neat piles and hopeless essay abandoned for now, she pads into the kitchen on socked feet just in time to see Ben slide a foil-covered pan into the oven.

“You’re done already?” Rey asks, the slightest bit relieved to know that their dinner is safe from her and the culinary mishaps she seems to attract like a magnet.

“It’ll be another forty-five minutes or so before we can eat,” Ben tells her as he begins to collect the dishes he’d used for prep; she crosses the kitchen to assist him. “But yeah, it’s pretty much done for now.”

Rey starts piling the dishes up in one sink while she fills the other with soapy water. “I wash, you dry,” she tells Ben, who easily acquiesces and trades the towel on his shoulder for one that isn’t decorated by tiny spots and streaks of sauce and oil. They tackle the dishes in companionable silence, a far cry from the tension and discord that had characterized their early interactions.

After two years of sharing the three-bedroom apartment with her closest friends, their living arrangements had undergone a minor shake-up when the guys finally stopped dancing around each other. With Finn moving into Poe’s room shortly after they’d gotten together, the trio had found themselves with a spare room and a way to lower their monthly expenses. Enter Ben Solo: Poe’s childhood friend, a newly-registered grad student at Coruscant U, and a total pain in Rey’s ass if only because their schedules lined up so that they found themselves fighting for use of the shared bathroom nearly every damn morning. It _had_ only taken them a month to sit down and figure out a solution, but that first month had been filled with tense silences and heated glares that would turn into screaming matches at the drop of a hat.

The first time they ended up in bed together had been due to one of those screaming matches, if Rey remembers correctly.

“So,” Ben says as she hands him a freshly washed skillet. “Last winter break before you graduate. How are you feeling about that?”

“Fucking _terrified_ ,” she laughs, her voice the tiniest bit hysteria-tinged. “You know, I think you and Poe had the right idea, staying in grad school to hide from the real world for a bit longer. Maybe I should do that.”

“Except Poe and I actually gave the real world a shot before we decided to come back,” he reminds her, carefully taking the knife she’s just rinsed off. “You should go out there and see what’s waiting for you, Rey. And if you don’t like what you find, _then_ you can come back and join us and our mountains of student loans.”

Rey shudders, rinsing off one last chopping board before she turns off the water and wipes her hands dry on Ben’s discarded dishtowel. A glance at the oven tells her they’ve got another thirty minutes to kill, and an idea forms in her mind as she hops up on the kitchen counter opposite Ben and watches him set aside the last of the clean dishes.

“Come here,” she calls softly once Ben is done, reaching out to pull him between her legs once he’s close enough. He comes willingly, warm hands settling on either side of her waist as she stretches to curl her hands around his neck and pull him in for a kiss. After nearly two years of sporadic hook-ups, kissing Ben is familiar and comfortable in all the best ways without being boring or predictable. In a minute or so she’ll wrap her legs around his hips, and he’ll pick her up and stumble blindly towards either of their beds, or maybe the couch since they have the apartment to themselves for a week. Rey knows exactly how this will go, can map it out minute by minute if asked to, and yet the experience remains just as thrilling as it was the first time they’d done this.

She crosses her ankles at his back, her feet pressing into the curve of his spine, and tightens her grip around his neck to brace herself for his next move–

– only to be left cold and wanting and confused as all hell when Ben suddenly extricates himself from her and takes three steps backwards to put some space between them.

“Is everything okay?” Rey asks, brows furrowed and hands firmly under her butt so that she can’t do something stupid like reach for him.

Ben cards a hand through his hair. “Yeah, just…” he sighs, taking a deep breath before meeting her eyes. “We shouldn’t do this anymore.”

Something heavy and dry and curiously like disappointment wells up in her throat. “Oh,” she manages to force out after a moment. “Oh,” Rey says again, breezier and lighter this time. “I just thought we could fool around a bit while waiting for dinner but if you don’t want to, that’s totally fine–”

She’s cut short by what sounds like a pained groan. “Trust me,” Ben looks her in the eye, all blown pupils and heavy intent and dark desire. “I want to.”

“So why…?”

“I just,” his hands curl into fists, and Rey watches as he swallows heavily and shakes his head. “I can’t.”

A thought occurs to her, one that leaves her just the slightest bit winded. “Is there someone else? Oh God, I’m so sorry, Ben, I didn’t even ask, I just assumed–” He’s been single ever since they first met, after all, and she hasn’t heard anything about a new partner or crush or anything along those lines.

“No, no, there’s no one else, there’s _definitely_ no one else, why would you–”

If she lets herself pause for even a moment to process his assurance, Rey knows she’ll have to analyze just _why_ she’s relieved to hear him deny even the possibility of someone else this vehemently. So instead, she moves right on to the next possible cause. “Is it me?” Her voice is timid and shaky in a way it hasn’t been in years, and she hates herself for it. You can take the girl out of an unstable childhood, but you can’t take the lifelong fear of inadequacy and rejection caused by said childhood out of the girl. “Ben, if I did or said something to make you uncomfortable, I’m sorry. And it’s totally okay if you don’t want to do this anymore, I respect–”

“Rey, no,” Ben steps closer, almost as if involuntarily so. His eyes widen when he realizes he has one hand up and reaching for her, and he drops the offending limb before she can strain towards his touch like a starved plant reaching for the sun. “You’ve done nothing wrong, okay? You’re amazing, and being with you is just… mind-blowing, every time,” he grins at the thought of it and she feels a matching smile tugging at her lips. “And it took me a while to realize why it’s so good, but now that I have I think it’s better if we don’t do this anymore.”

“Wait, what?” Rey’s smile disappears before it can fully blossom, a frown taking its place instead as she tries to keep up with Ben’s train of thought. “Why?”

“Trust me,” Ben mumbles, looking everywhere _but_ at her. “It’s better if you don’t know.”

Rey hops down from the counter and closes the distance between them, arms crossed as she looks up to pin Ben with her very best _serious look_. “I think I’ll be the judge of that, thank you very much. If you don’t want to sleep with me anymore, that’s okay and I respect and accept your decision. But if there’s some kind of weird reason behind this, now is not the time to be vague and mysterious, Ben Solo.”

“Rey, I really don’t think–”

“Look,” she interrupts with a sigh, dropping her arms and the tough act as she notices what appears to be genuine discomfort on Ben’s face. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me but if you’re cutting me off from the best sex I’ve ever had, I’d really appreciate it if you could tell me why.”

A glimmer of the Ben she knows, the Ben she thinks _only_ she knows, shines through when he flashes her a crooked grin and drops his voice into that low, teasing tone she associates with his smirk and barely-there touches and rising desperation in her voice. “The best sex you’ve ever had, huh?”

“Oh, shut up,” Rey rolls her eyes, happy to play along in this brief return to normalcy. “ _You_ said it’s mind-blowing.”

“Damn right it is,” he leans in closer, momentarily forgetting himself. His grin falters as he catches himself and freezes, still looming above her but with no intention of going any further. “Rey, you mean so much to me,” Ben whispers, heartachingly earnest as he traps her in place with his eyes. “I don’t want to lose you because of some stupid shit I should really just keep to myself.”

“Ben,” she sighs with a shake of her head, wrapping her arms around his waist to pull him into a hug. “You’re one of my closest friends in the world. You’re more important to me than you could possibly imagine,” Rey admits, even though she has no idea how he’s managed to so thoroughly carve out a space for himself in her life and her heart in so short a period of time. “No matter what you tell me, that won’t ever change,” she whispers against his neck, reaching up on her tiptoes to press a kiss to the underside of his jaw.

“Promise?” he mumbles into her hair a little too timidly, fingers digging into her sides a little too desperately.

Rey steps back from the embrace to look him in the eye and rests her own hands on top of his. “I promise. Now please,” she cracks a grin, hoping like hell that she isn’t setting the wrong tone for whatever is to follow, “tell me why sex is _mind-blowingly_ good between us.”

“Because it’s not just sex,” Ben admits in one fell swoop, releasing his grip on her waist to cradle her face instead, his fingers gently brushing along her jawline. “Because I care about you, because I have feelings for you,” he whispers.

“Ben,” Rey breathes in wonder, her hands rising to twine around his neck and hold him close.

“I can’t keep doing this with you because I want so much more, Rey,” he finally explains, voice gaining strength with each passing second that she remains in his arms. “I want to fall asleep with you every night, not just once every few months. I want to actually wake up with you for once, and then I want to keep doing it every single day. I want to do ridiculous things like hold your hand and go on cheesy dates and introduce you to my family,” he’s smiling by the end of it, encouraged by Rey’s matching expression as she pictures all of the things he’s offering her, all of the things she never thought she’d want with anyone, all of the things she now realizes she only wants with Ben.

Rey pulls him down for a kiss. “I don’t know about meeting your family this early,” she murmurs against his lips, the both of them smiling too wide to do anything more than trade fleeting kisses. “But all of the other stuff, I want that now.”

“Yeah?” Ben asks, eyes bright with hope and joy.

“Definitely,” Rey assures him. “Ben, I can’t promise it’ll all work out,” she warns him. “And I might suck at this relationship thing, because I’ve never really bothered with it. But if you want this, if you want me, I’m yours.”

“And I’m yours,” he promises in turn, stumbling backwards when she reacts by jumping into his arms and _finally_ kissing him the way she loves best, all warm and familiar and so, _so_ precious to her.

“Bedroom, now,” she commands, and for a brief, glorious moment it looks like they might actually make it there.

The oven dings, and Ben groans into their kiss before dropping his head onto her shoulder. “Any chance I could convince you to ignore that?” he murmurs against her neck, lips warm and wet and tempting.

“Not a chance,” Rey gives Ben one last peck before hopping out of his arms. “I may or may not be in love with you, Ben Solo, but food will always be my first love.”

She holds out a hand and smiles when he laces his fingers through hers, shivers when he pulls her close enough for his lips to graze her ear as he whispers, “I may or may not be in love with you as well, Rey Kenobi.”

They eat on the couch, forgoing the perfectly fine dining table to cuddle up to each other the way they’ve only ever allowed themselves to do in their sleep.

Finn and Poe return home a week later to find them doing… _other_ things on the couch, but that’s a story for another time.

**Author's Note:**

> So... this happened instead of the fun little ficlet I wanted to write. I’m not pleased with how sidetracked I got, but it’s sweet and fluffy enough that I don’t mind this fic that much. I’d love to get back to the original idea and follow it up with a quick look at their week-long trial run eventually, but we’ll see if I ever get around to it. For now, I have _song for a scribbled out name_ ’s final chapter and yet another modern AU one-shot in the works.
> 
> As usual, I’d love to hear from you guys. If you liked this, please don’t hesitate to let me know!
> 
> UPDATE: I did the thing. I wrote the week-long trial run. It's called _sign up now for a free trial!_ and there's a link below.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [sign up now for a free trial!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14339220) by [hi_raeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_raeth/pseuds/hi_raeth)




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